Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey
Fig 1
Distribution of mean height of women according to the age.
From NFHS-II to NFHS-III round, women across religious groups experienced improvement in their mean height. This is significant among Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women (S3 Table). From NFHS-III to IV, women of 15–25 years, belonging to Sikh community, exhibited a significant decline in mean height by 0.66 cm [95% CI, -1.16 to -0.16, p-0.009] while among Jain community, women showed significantly improved mean height by 1.72 cm [95%CI, 0.05 to 3.38, p- 0.044]. Buddhist/neo-Buddhist women were also observed to have improved their average height by 0.40 cm [95% CI, -0.70 to 1.49, p- 0.478]. (S2 Table).